Automated Sphinx Install in Mac OS X Using Rake

One challenge for any team building a Rails project with Sphinx: keeping everyone up to date, on the same version of searchd. We wanted to make sure it was installed the same way, same version, on everyone’s dev machine. And we all work remotely of course :)

The solution for us was a rake task that downloads, compiles and installs Sphinx on OS X Leopard. We assume that you previously installed the developer tools (Mac OS X Install Disc 2, XCode).

To get the compile to work, you need to install mysql5 via MacPorts so you have the correct libs available. sudo port install mysql5 Alas, we never were able to get Leopard’s MySQL libs to compile with Sphinx correctly. But never fear, installing MySQL via MacPorts will not affect the standard Apple mysqld server or client in any way.